Recently, Serenity Systemsreleased the second first release candidate of eComStation 2.0, the successor to IBM's os/2. Mensys, the online distributor of eComStation and other os/2-related products, was so kind as to provide OSNews with a review copy of this release candidate, and since my experience with os/2 and eCS is not much more than a few failed attempts at installing Warp 4, I was eager to try it out. Read on for a short history of os/2 and eCS and a review of the release candidate.

In Germany, the reseller Escom sold PCs with OS/2 3.0 preinstalled and preconfigured. From the few people I know who bought such a system, it was a shock to them when they moved into the "Windows" world, because they seemed to loose lots of comfort and stability.

"I was only 12 when I started playing with OS/2. I used it cause I was running a BBS, and Windows could not multitask DOS software worth a damn. So you had two options: either dedicate your computer entirely to the BBS and not use it for anything else, or run the BBS software under OS/2 or Desqview."

Nice you mentioned Desqview! If I look upward to the storage facility above my head, I can see a Desqview/X package with manuals and disks. Next to it, there's still an original IBM OS/2 package with manual, discs and disks. :-)

And, yes, "Windows" wasn't very good at multitasking these times.

"But I learned to appreciate OS/2 for a lot of it's other qualities as well. Like the fact that it had a true desktop instead of the Program Manager that Windows had. "

While "Windows" just claimed to be object oriented, OS/2 really was. Furthermore, it had the famous REXX (NB: REXX != Kommissar Rex). =^_^=

In Germany, some banks still do use OS/2 for their automated cash dispensers. Our finance administration still uses OS/2 systems as terminal like nodes to an IBM mainframe system which is responsible for finance administration of the whole federal country. It worked for years, and it has to continue working this way, because anything else simply isn't affordable.